Hanspeter Hofmann

Bonheur automatique

19.01. - 03.02.2008

Image Credits

Duration

19.01. - 03.02.2008

Location

Kunsthaus Graz

Curators

Christoph Doswald, Katia Schurl

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About the
Exhibition

In the exhibition Bonheur automatique, the Swiss artist Hanspeter Hofmann looks for linear relationships between chemical inputs and mental states and explores the question of how quasi-mechanical interfaces between people and the world can be used creatively.


Further information

Finissage: 01.02.2008, 7pm

For this purpose, Hofmann is running a printing workshop in Space04 at the Kunsthaus Graz for a week. Based on pre-produced graphics, which the artist reworks on site using a printing press, the daily information and images are integrated and processed into the work process.

Hofmann finally applies the resulting images to the walls of the exhibition space, so that in a constantly evolving act not only an artistic overgrowth and adhesion of current affairs arises, but also fundamental questions about the transfer of artistic work categories between printmaking, painting, performance and installation are discussed.

The printed end-product is Hofmann’s starting point – and of course his end-product as well. He is quite happy to use recognisable items drawn from mass-media communications in his painting – typographical features, photographic images from the consumer goods industry or reproductions from scientific and medical handbooks. Yet he also likes to allow the machine to make a creative contribution in the form of serendipities arising in the production process. What would normally be classified as a printing defect is for Hofmann’s artistic purposes the starting point for something creative. This is eloquent of an empirical artistic attitude that has little regard for formal or academic traditions.